Each year Hartley Henderson breaks down the Academy Awards in conjunction with our popular Academy Awards Betting Odds page. This year Hartley struck gold by going 10 for 10 with his Oscar predictions. Had bettors been able to find a sportsbook that would allow a 10-team parlay, these bets is would have paid over 500-1!

He identified the odds-on favorites that would win, but most likely would be a bad value to wager on. He also looked for Value at the Oscars in several categories, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and his best bet in the Best Hairstyle and Makeup category. The heavy favorite for Best Director was Steven Spielberg for Lincoln but Hartley was able to identify the decline in popularity amongst that various film industry groups and picked Ang Lee at 4-1 odds for his work in Life of Pi. In his handicapping of the categories that included Lincoln Hartley also noticed The odds on Argo creeping up in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. He picked Argo which unfortunately, lost some value as the awards approached, but won at better than 1-1 in a category where the favorite is usually -200 or worse.

The smaller category of Best Hairstyle and Makeup was the best bet of the night. Hartley noted, “The best bet at the Oscars is always to wager against movies like The Hobbit, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Xmen etc. in minor categories when going against a best picture nominee; hence my pick of Les Mis for best makeup.” This year Hartley’s angle proved profitable as the huge favorite, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey got beaten out by Les Miserables at favorable odds of 5/2.

On his sweeping the board last night Hartley said, “It seemed clear from other awards that the Academy loved Argo and didn’t care for Lincoln (save for Daniel Day Lewis). When making my picks I assumed they would thus award Argo at every chance and avoid Lincoln. The odds on Argo and Django for screenplay were way too high given the director shuns of both Affleck and Tarantino and there was no way the Academy was going to give the award to Spielberg for one of his poorer directing jobs. It thus made sense for the Academy to award Lee for his other works as well as Life of Pi. That said, I was told that a large number of voters chose to leave that category blank in protest of Affleck’s shun.”

For a complete breakdown of Hartley’s ten for ten run in the 85^th Oscars read his article, Looking for Value at the Oscars, which was posted on Wednesday before the Oscars and gave bettors and office pool players plenty of time to get the top Oscar picks at the best prices. Look for Hartley again next year at the 86^th Oscar awards and read his Insider column every week for betting industry insights.