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I was asked in my pick thread earlier why I was concerned about a .5 point difference when evaluating a game. I gave a short answer there. Here is the long version of that answer.
When I evaluate games I look at a few key statistics and then I set a line. This line is of course an estimation of what I feel the representative score of the 2 teams would be over a large sampling of games. For example...Let's say I decide that Team A is likely to score 89 points against Team B and Team B is likely to score 95 points. This doesnt mean in anyway that they score will necessarily reflect this for this one game. One team may get hotter than usual or one team could get colder than usual. what this score represents is that this is what I believe to be the average outcome of scores if these 2 teams were to play indefinately under the current circumstances over and over again.
Now...How does this reflect my idea that .5 points can matter. Well when we evaluate our performance we can only do it a game at a time. So we have to have some backing for the belief that we are properly handicapping games. Through analysis we will find that we have to have a cutoff between where our system works and where it stops working. This will happen when the system finds a place where it can actually beat the juice we must lay. If our system is tight and better at setting lines than the books than we will find these equitable lines to be more numerous at a lower differential say...3 points for basketball and 2 points for football. Let's say you arent as good at determining line values then your edge may lie only on a larger differential like 4 or 3 respectively. Because this averaging out occurs over a large number of games a half a point can make a huge deal.
let's put it this way. Let's say we look at 100 bets that we've placed. we've hit 60%...Yay!!! Well out of 60 bets we've nailed the hook 5 times (actually a pretty reasonable number) or 5% so if we didnt have that half point on those 5 bets than we would have only hit 55% and would barely be beating our book. This is why .5 points can make a very large difference in your wagering and should be noted when playing a game.
BOL
PK
When I evaluate games I look at a few key statistics and then I set a line. This line is of course an estimation of what I feel the representative score of the 2 teams would be over a large sampling of games. For example...Let's say I decide that Team A is likely to score 89 points against Team B and Team B is likely to score 95 points. This doesnt mean in anyway that they score will necessarily reflect this for this one game. One team may get hotter than usual or one team could get colder than usual. what this score represents is that this is what I believe to be the average outcome of scores if these 2 teams were to play indefinately under the current circumstances over and over again.
Now...How does this reflect my idea that .5 points can matter. Well when we evaluate our performance we can only do it a game at a time. So we have to have some backing for the belief that we are properly handicapping games. Through analysis we will find that we have to have a cutoff between where our system works and where it stops working. This will happen when the system finds a place where it can actually beat the juice we must lay. If our system is tight and better at setting lines than the books than we will find these equitable lines to be more numerous at a lower differential say...3 points for basketball and 2 points for football. Let's say you arent as good at determining line values then your edge may lie only on a larger differential like 4 or 3 respectively. Because this averaging out occurs over a large number of games a half a point can make a huge deal.
let's put it this way. Let's say we look at 100 bets that we've placed. we've hit 60%...Yay!!! Well out of 60 bets we've nailed the hook 5 times (actually a pretty reasonable number) or 5% so if we didnt have that half point on those 5 bets than we would have only hit 55% and would barely be beating our book. This is why .5 points can make a very large difference in your wagering and should be noted when playing a game.
BOL
PK
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