This article is part of our Betting Advice series.
The third stop of the PBA Tour season brought 80 bowlers to Chicagoland for 18 games of qualifying. The top 24 advanced to best-of-7 match play.
Bill O'Neill and Graham Fach led qualifying, but the one-handers were overtaken by the two-handed bowlers in match play. O'Neill lost 4-2 in the round of 16 to lefty two-hander Eric Jones, while Fach lost to righty two-hander Tim Foy Jr. 4-2 in the same round. In total, seven of the final eight bowlers use a two-handed release, leaving Sean Rash, who was just announced as one of the newest members of the PBA Hall of Fame earlier this week, as the only one-hander left standing for the stepladder finals. He will be joined by Foy Jr, Matt Ogle, Chris Via and Santtu Tahvanainen.
I've analyzed every win, spread, total and futures bet available on the BetRivers Sportsbook app and identified my favorite bets heading into Saturday's stepladder finals.
2025 PBA Owen's Illinois Classic Matchups
Tim Foy Jr. over Matthew Ogle (+100)
More often than not I'm going to take the underdog in the first match of the stepladder because it's almost always a good value play. I understand why Ogle has to be listed as the favorite because he did put up the more impressive and consistent scores throughout the tournament. However, I just consider that these are the best bowlers in the world, and they already bowled about 30 games, averaging over 220 per game to end up within one position of each other. In a one-game match, either bowler has a near 50/50 chance to win it. The odds imply that Ogle has a 57% chance of winning, so the betting value is on Foy.
This betting strategy has worked each of the first two tournaments this season, with Michael Davidson (+115) defeating A.J. Johnson in the Delaware Classic and Francois Lavoie (+150) topping Anthony Simonsen at the U.S. Open.
It is also worth noting that at the start of each block - on fresh oil - Foy shot games of 226, 300, 262, 139 (oops!), 235 and 253. In the same situation, Ogle only had one game over 230.
Tim Foy Jr. vs. Matthew Ogle total under 455.5
At the Delaware Classic, every stepladder final match finished over 460. At the U.S. Open last week, only one of the four final matches topped 455. The Illinois Classic oil pattern is scoring somewhere in between. The TV pair tends to play a bit tougher, and these players' nerves could be a factor too, leading to enough missed shots to give us the under.
All odds via BetRivers Sportsbook as of February 8th, 1 am CST
2025 PBA Owen's Illinois Classic Winner Best Bet
Chris Via +260 to win
Santtu Tahvanainen is the betting favorite to win as the no. 1 seed, but I'm looking at Via as the hottest player on Tour right now. Via is coming off a third-place finish in the U.S. Open, while Tahvanainen missed qualifying for the U.S. Open and finished 64th out of 70 players in the Delaware Classic. It's good to see Santtu back on a show, after he missed all of the 2024 season to injury, but finishing the deal on Saturday won't be easy. So far, we've seen that the challenger to the top spot has an edge simply because he already has some momentum from winning the previous match. Last week, E.J. Tackett won the U.S. Open as the no. 2 seed, and the previous week Graham Fach climbed from the no. 3 seed to capture the title in Delaware. I've got Via winning it all as the no. 2 seed this week.
For more picks be sure to follow @RotowireBowling and @TheSpatula300 on X (Twitter).
2025 PBA Owen's Illinois Classic TV Schedule
All times listed are local (Central Standard Time)
Saturday, February 8th
PBA Owen's Illinois Classic Finals (LIVE on FS1): 7 p.m.
