Idol Bets

In an event that surprised none, David Cook won the 2008 American Idol competition. While IdolBets.com does not care one bit about his future career, so don’t expect to hear much about him from here on out.
We have been touting David Cooks shares since the inception of this site (and many weeks prior to this site going online). For our SimPicks, we had purchased 8 shares of him. Since we also bough shares of other contestants, we missed out on some profit but it’s all part of a hedging strategy. Overall, I suggested $398 worth of investments that netted $800. A solid 101% return on investment (ROI). Not bad in a bear market. Of course, you could have invested more or less depending on how much you wanted to throw around.

Since the work on this site is done for the season, we’ll be shifting our attention to more strategy-based posts. I may even post a premium e-book on how to bet this show. If you have a pretty good ear for talent, don’t get caught up in people, and are generally disconnected from the show, it’s not that difficult to make a killing. I want to get into some slightly more advanced betting strategies and get more into live betting to really take advantage of volatile prices. The season-finale was a great indicator of how volatile things can get towards the end. With 2 clear-cut finalists this year there wasn’t quite the shifts there could have been in round of three and four so hopefully I can get into more detail there during the “off-season”.

My next post is going to be a basic “How To” explaining signing up, getting money into your account, understanding the long-term World Sports Exchange markets and how to get involved in them. It’s pretty easy but there are a few things you should know going in.

So the Idol Finals are over and the only thing left to hear is who won.  An interesting thing happened last night in the Idols market and is definitely worth noting (I plan on writing some strategy articles here during the “offseason” that will go more in-depth on market strategies) and that is how the markets react during and right after a show.  There was a massive drop in David Cook’s stock value last night immediately following the show.

By most accounts Archuleta performed better than Cook so it’s a natural assumption to get rid of your Cook shares ASAP.  Well in doing so, people dropped the sell value of his stock from 66 to 25.  That’s a massive fall and would have been a great time to purchase some Cook shares if you actually understood how the results would turn out.  I said several weeks ago that Cook was a shoe-in.  I initially had my doubts, the biggest of which is that Archuleta would outperform him during the finals (which he did) but I later said that it wouldn’t matter.  Archuleta dug himself into such a giant hole that he never recovered from.  It really wasn’t his fault but his ridiculous personality and lack of legitimate emotion and connection with his songs doomed him.  He would need 3 more nights like last night to make up the margin Cook had built.

Because of that, I never suggested hedging your Cook shares with Archuleta shares.  It made SOME sense do hedge with Syesha shares two weeks ago, just in case but there is a big difference between hedging with $4 shares and hedging with $30 shares.  I was confident enough in Cook’s chances not to suggest even selling any of his shares.  That MAY be something you’d want to look into to reduce some of your risk but at this point, Cook looks like the winner.

In case you don’t know, DialIdol is predicting Cook to be the winner and it’s by a large enough margin to be statistically accurate and outside the margin of error.  That information is very strong and telling and should be accurate.  Unless DialIdol has decided to throw it’s credibility out the window and take advantage of the betting markets by providing false data, then Cook shares should be worth $100 at the end of tonight.  DialIdol is a pretty big reason why the Cook shares recovered nearly all of their lost value today, that and the ridiculously low price they were selling for last night.

The American Idol market has spoken.

David Cook is now a huge favorite in the eyes of the WSEX American Idol market investors.  This season has been interesting.  Cook should have been a favorite from the first or second week once the top 24 started.  Instead, Archuleta was a MASSIVE favorite, buying around 55 or so from what I can recall.  That early in the season it can be very hard to predict who is going to run deep and Archuleta was an extremely safe bet to go far.  However, he was never a great favorite to win in my eyes.  Pretty much everything I thought of back then that would prevent him from winning came out from then until now:  his annoying personality, lack of versatility, lack of taste, etc.  Meanwhile, Cook was rated pretty low back then and it was pretty obvious (to me at least) that he was going to be a goldmine in the markets.  He crept up from 3, to 7, to 11, to 20, to 30, to 40, and got up around 57 last week.  After a solid performance last night where he sang three songs well, with one of them being a bit outside his comfort zone, he’s now ballooned up to 71-76.

A lot of this market surge has to do with the past two weeks’ DialIdol numbers.  Cook has been the clear leader two weeks in a row.  It’s safe to assume the market thinks he’ll have a strong showing in the finals.   A few weeks ago I mentioned that Cook could struggle in the finals the same way Blake Lewis did last year.  I actually don’t think that’s going to happen.  Cook doesn’t have the same downfalls that Lewis had.  Lewis didn’t have a particularly strong voice and needs to have the right type of song to sound good.  I don’t think Cook has those problems.

I’m actually going to suggest picking up a couple shares of Syesha in the SimPicks.  Although DialIdol has her going home, she made up some ground last week and Archuleta really sucked last night.  Her shares can be purchased for $2, so pick up 8 of the for $16 and hope she can make in through.  It’s a small amount of money to invest and if she somehow beats the odds and passes up Archuleta tonight, SimPicks guarantee s a final value of $800 with the 8 shares of Cook and 8 shares of Syesha.

What a bland show last night.  You’d think with such a long list of great material, we’d get to hear some interesting songs and performances.  Instead, Syesha and David Archuleta managed to pick the most boring and predictable songs available to them

Jason Castro proved to be the most entertaining performer based on his antics, terrible rendition of I Shot The Sheriff and forgotten words on Mr. Tambourine man.  He also delivered the line of the night when Simon said “I don’t know what you were thinking” and Castro quipped “I was thinking Bob Marley!”  DialIdol has Castro placed solely at the bottom with no other contestants statistically close to being voted off tonight.  Castro can get back to his world of bongs, pizza rolls, and the Planet Earth Blu-Ray set.

I’m starting to wonder how much Syesha is going to cannibalize Archuleta’s supporters.  The two are both pretty decent singers but completely lack any sort of taste.  They’ll make great records if they can find a producers and songwriters that can craft them into something likable but they’ll never be able to add anything original on their own.  Taste is something that doesn’t get too much appreciation on Idol and I’m not saying that Cook is anything special in that category but he’s significantly better than either of the other two.  However, he’s also has a good voice, has proved to be versatile and has carved out a niche on the show.  That alone is going to get him a pretty loyal fanbase and a lot of support from casual voters as well.  Archuleta and Syesha are only going to get votes from people who are looking for formulaic singing standards.  I don’t know if Syesha can get enough support next week to overthrow Archuleta but it wouldn’t surprise me that much.

Cook shares aren’t worth selling yet unless you’re looking to book a profit.  He should go up a bit next week still.

Final 2 strategy is probably going to be to a combination of selling Cook shares and hedging with Archuleta shares if he’s still around.  We’ll see where the two stand and go on from there.

With 8 Cook shares, the SimPicks portfolio is pretty strong given the initial investment and the fact that I came into this blog late into the season.  We’d be looking a 4 digit returns had I started in the 24 idol weeks when I initially picked Cook as someone who could go deep.