NRFI and YRFI bets

What you are betting

Six outs, three for each team, and one question: does anybody score? If the first inning ends 0 to 0, the NRFI wins. If either team scores even one run, the YRFI wins. Who wins the game doesn't matter, and neither does anything after the third out of the bottom of the first.

Books list it under different names. You'll see it as NRFI and YRFI, as "run in the first inning, yes or no", or as a first-inning total of 0.5, under and over. They are the same bet. Most books also deal each team on its own (will the home team score in the first?) and a first-inning moneyline, where a scoreless inning is a third result, as on a three-way moneyline.

The price

Say a game is dealt NRFI -120 and YRFI +100. On the NRFI you risk $120 to win $100, and you need to win 54.55 percent of the time to break even. On the YRFI you risk $100 to win $100, and you need 50 percent. Add the two and you get 104.55 percent, so the book's margin is in about the same place as on a side at -110, where the two add to 104.76. The implied probability page shows how those percentages are worked out.

The price moves with the starting pitchers and the top of each lineup more than with anything else, which is the right instinct, because they are nearly all that is in the bet.

Two halves, both clean

Here is the part I'd want every NRFI bettor to understand. The NRFI isn't one thing going right. It is two: the road team fails to score in the top of the inning, and the home team fails to score in the bottom. You need both. Treat the halves as separate and you multiply.

Say each half inning is scoreless 75 percent of the time. Both are scoreless 56.25 percent of the time (0.75 times 0.75), and at -120 that is a winning bet: over 100 bets of $120 you would expect to win 56.25 times $100 and lose 43.75 times $120, a profit of $375. Now say each half is scoreless 72 percent of the time. Both are scoreless 51.84 percent of the time, and the same 100 bets lose about $595. Three points on each half turned a winner into a loser.

The break-even at -120 works out to each half being scoreless about 73.9 percent of the time, because 0.739 times 0.739 is 0.546. So the bet is a judgment on two pitchers at once, and an uneven pair is worse than it looks. One starter clean 80 percent of the time and the other 65 percent gives you 52 percent, below the 54.55 you need, even though the average of the two is 72.5.

The YRFI is the mirror of it. It needs one run, in either half, off either pitcher, so one bad half inning is enough.

Why the first inning is its own animal

The first inning is the one inning where you know who bats. Every team starts the game at the top of its order, so each pitcher faces the other side's best hitters, usually, before he has settled. Later innings depend on how the game has gone. The first doesn't.

It is also the one stretch of the game that is all starting pitcher. No bullpen, no pinch hitters, no manager's decisions. If your handicapping is built on starters, the first inning and the first five innings (covered under first-half and quarter betting) are where it applies most cleanly.

Grading

Most books need the whole first inning to be completed for the bet to have action. The bottom of the first is always played, even if the home team leads, because the game can't end in the first. If rain stops play halfway through, the bet is usually void, unless the result was already decided, which a run in the top half settles in favor of the YRFI at some books. Many books also tie it to the listed starting pitchers, as on the full game, and void it if one is scratched. Check your book's house rules before the night it matters.

How I'd treat it

It is a popular bet because it is quick. A player can have a sweat at 7:05 and know by 7:25. That speed is also its danger. There are games every day for six months, and a man who bets the first inning of three of them a night is paying the margin dozens of times a week on bets that each take twenty minutes.

I'd bet the NRFI only when I liked both pitchers against the top of both orders, and I'd want the price to clear the 73.9 percent per half that -120 asks for, by my own numbers, not by feel. I'd bet the YRFI when one pitcher was the weak link, because it only needs one. And I'd keep it small, a fraction of what I'd put on a full game, since six outs is about the smallest sample baseball offers. The bankroll page has the sums.

For baseball's version of the point spread, see run lines.