Hey Blackboxers (visitors to this site will now be referred to as Blackboxers),
The website www.capperspicks.com has picked me up as a provisional handicapper. They've got a ton of great resources for anyone that's interested in sports betting or just sports in general. Lots of useful features like sportsbook reviews, a parlay calculator, articles on money management, different types of bets, glossary, etc. You can also find stats and trends and whatever you want.
Enough about them, let's talk about me. I'll be posting my picks for free in their forums (not sure which one yet, when I find out, I'll post the link). Also, I'm going to continue to post everything on this website... for FREE!... which will include:
- Predictions of the straight-up winners with confidence number (great for survivor pools)
- Picks ATS and over/under picks with their respective confidences
- Power rankings and ratings for offense, defense, and overall
- I'm going to post the optimal betting strategies which will include suggested bets and parlays, bets to stay away from, etc.
- Also, I got a request from a Blackboxer to post some stats NFLSim generates. These will include: Yards per Pass, Yards per Play, and Yards per Point. Bearing in mind that NFLSim generates more stats than you could ever want (any game stat you can find on the NFL website), I'm willing to oblige requests for the posting of certain stats.
That's all I can think of for now, but I'll be back soon with updates when I think of something else.
If anyone is betting in the preseason, you're crazy, but good luck to ya.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
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So one thing I've always wondered about is how applicable last season's performance is to this year's pre-season.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem that one ought to be able to do better than average by using some or all of the prior season to provide stats you could use to make pre-season predictions.
I'm sure there would be a lot less accuracy due to changes in players, teams being "rusty", etc... just curious what you think.
Hey singletrack,
ReplyDeleteAs great as it would be to transition smoothly from season to season, I don't think it would work-- at least not the way my simulator is built (NFLSim doesn't take into account individual players).
From my experience, every season and every pre-season is completely distinct. The main problems are "personnel" and "intent". The personnel problem occurs when a body of stats develop for a certain group of players, then you try to assign those stats to a new group of players. Those stats are a misrepresentation of the new team's ability and give inaccurate results in the simulations. For example, Green Bay with Brett Favre, 2007 season: 13-3, lost to Dallas and Chicago (twice). Without Favre, 2008 pre-season: 0-2, lost to Cincinnati and blown out by SF.
Intent comes into play during the pre-season when the coach's motivation is not necessarily to win, but to test out his new players as they vie for their positions. So the veterans from last year who generated the stats used in the simulations will be on the field for a drive or two, but then the second string takes over. Example: New England (0-2). No one needs a simulation to predict that they can beat Tampa Bay. They lost because the Belichick wanted to test his bench.
SO, when the players are different and the coaching is different, the stats don't quite work. Unfortunately, that means that the regular season can't use pre-season stats. Hence, the simulations begin week 2.
singletrack, I hope this answered your questions. If anyone's got other opinions, I'd love to hear them.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks. Definitely figured that there would be problems if key players change, but hadn't thought through your point on the coaches' objectives - to test various players, not necessarily to win.
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting to hear that you're not simulating down to the player level. I'd wondered about that - but couldn't think of a good way to simulate the personnel changes that happen throughout every game. (Perhaps model assuming that the starters always play?) Seems to me that the main benefit of modeling players would be to easily adjust for injuries and other things that change the lineup.