How the desk works

Methodology

Each fight gets 100 seeded Monte Carlo runs of this matchup. The board reports the counts: win%, method split, finish-round histogram, and go-the-distance. Official actions are PLAY or PASS with a unit size between 0.5 and 1.5.

State comes from public UFC.com athlete pages, ufcstats career lines, Tapology last-5 / career method mix when the UFC list is short, and this-week official / beat notes only. Missing fields are UNKNOWN. TUF and debut fighters are not given invented ufcstats zeros — last-5 plus career method mix only. A one-fight UFC sample (SApM 10.94, TD 0) is blended, not treated as a rate. Last-5 is a prior, not the whole model.

Each run is a full fight: strike volume vs defense, takedowns vs TDD, submissions only after control or a scramble, knockout chance from power + chin + accumulated damage, and cardio/age into later rounds (the 5-round main can put mass in R4–R5). The 100 rows are counted. Those counts are the bars.

Passing is a feature. If the number is already in the price, we sit. Books are a label (“market, not our ticket”), not the model. No official scratch or weight-miss was reported on the Vegas 121 card this week as of Sep 20.

Scoring: +10 correct winner, +5 method if you filled it, +3 underdog (room share under 40% at lock), +25 perfect card.