Monday, August 10, 2009

Black Box Sports Name Change Contest (Win $50)

Hi all,

I think it may be time to move to a real website. Unfortunately, blackboxsports.com is already taken ... though they haven't updated their site in over a year (as far as I can tell) ... what a waste of a great name.

Remember, there are no plans to charge for the use of my Black Box Sports. NFL and NBA Black Box will remain totally free! I will always be available to answer your questions and I will try my damnedest to update the site every week in a timely fashion.

I'm asking you fine gents (any ladies out there?) to think of a new name for Black Box Sports. I'm one of the (un)lucky 80% of unemployed college grads, so I can't offer a huge prize to the winner. How does $20 $50 sound? $20 $50 goes to the winner of the Black Box Sports name change contest.

The goal is to think of an edgy name that (prefferably) alludes to computers/simulations and appeals to your demographic. When people hear your name, they're curious, they have to check out the site, and once they do, they're so intrigued by the idea of an accurate football simulation that they're back next week just to see how it did.

Submit your entry as a comment in this post or send it to blackboxsports@gmail.com. You can submit as many names as you want. The more names you submit, the better your chance to win. It's free to enter and you can win $20 $50. If you post it, please post using a Google or Aim account or with your email or something so I can contact you if you win. And be sure that "yourentry".com is available.

The Contest: Submit a new name for Black Box Sports
The Prize: $20 $50 via Paypal
The Deadline: Midnight of August 31, 2009
Announcement of the Winner:
September 1, 2009

Sunday, August 9, 2009

2008 Season Results

CHECK OUT THE POST ABOVE, BLACK BOX NAME CHANGE CONTEST (win $20 $50, free to enter, just submit a new name!)

These results from last year, excluding weeks 1 and 2, which there wasn't enough data for. It's broken into 3 sections: Straight up Winner, Against the Spread, and Over/Under. I broke down the approximately 200 games into 5 intervals, each interval representing a confidence spread of 10%. When you see 96 games in the 50-59% interval, that means of the 200+- games NFLSim picked, 96 games fell in the confidence interval of 50-59%. Likewise, 70 games had winners predicted as 60-69% favorites (in the straight-up category). To the left of the 'Games' column is the 'Correct' column. That is simply the number of NFLSim's correct picks in that interval. Accuracy is the percentage of time that NFLSim correctly picked a game in that interval.

1. Straight up Winner
NFLSim was absolutely phenomenal when it came to picking the winner. At first glance, you see the season record at 139-70 (66.5%). That's nothing special until you take a deeper look at the statistics.

Straight-up % Interval Wins Games Win %

50-59% 61 96 63.5%

60-69 45 70 64.3

70-79 27 36 75

80-89 4 5 8

90-100 2 2 1

Total 139 209 66.5

First, lets take a look at the 'expected number of wins' for each interval. In the 50-59% interval, it can be expected that after a large number of games, 55% of those games should be picked correctly(the mid-point of the 50's). In the 60-69% interval, 65% should be picked correctly, and so on. The closer NFLSim's number of correct picks is to the expected number of correct picks, the better NFLSim approximates reality. This is very important, because if you know the exact probability of a team winning, you automatically know if Vegas' payout makes for a good bet or a bad bet. The closer that the predicted probability is to the actual probability, the smarter your bets are. The smarter your bets, the more $ you make! (This is the basis for the Bet Optimization Algorithm.... which is new and much improved this year.)

If we take a look at the first interval, 50-59%, 96 games took place. In theory, you should expect that 55% of those teams predicted to win should actually win. 55% of 96 games, 55% * 96, equals an expected number of wins of 53. NFLSim actually picked 61 winners, so it beat the expected number of wins by 8. This is great because it picked more winners than it was supposed to, but it was pretty far from the expected number of wins. From 60% on is where it gets very, very interesting. NFLSim reaches near theoretical perfection - the probability given by NFLSim is the actual probability that the team will win!!! If anyone has seen this feat achieved by anyone else please let me know.

Here is a table of expected numbers of wins:


Expected Correct Actual Correct
50-59% 53 61
60-69 46 45
70-79 27 27
80-89 4 4
90-100 2 2
Total 132 139


In the graph: Red is what should have happened, Blue is what did happen.



Now that I've gone through the whole explanation of the stats, I'll skip straight to the numbers.

2. ATS

ATS didn't do as well as straight-up. Looks like it was pretty close to a flip of a coin. The right team would win by the wrong score. I would hate to tamper with the program when the straight-up accuracy is so reliable after 209 games. I'll probably just stop posting ATS until I can fix it up.

ATS % Interval Wins Games Win %

50-59 37 86 43

60-69 46 78 59

70-79 18 33 54.5

80-89 0 3 0

90-100 1 1 100

Total 102 201 50.7


Exp. Correct Actual Correct
50-59% 47 37
60-69 51 46
70-79 25 18
80-89 3 0
90-100 1 1
Total 127 102


Interestingly, the slope of the trend line is almost what it should be. Had 1 of the 80% games won, it would be almost perfect (albeit far lower than it should be). That suggests that all I may need to do is to add/subtract from the calculated probability to arrive at the true probability... interesting. There is back testing to be done!

3. Over/Under
Finally, if you haven't gone to sleep yet, here are the O/U stats. O/U actually did much better than I expected. It performed much better than the ATS and its accuracy approached the expected accuracy.

Over/Under % Interval Wins Games O/U Win %

50-59 77 145 53.1

60-69 30 48 62.5

70-79 3 6 50

80-89 2 3 66.7

90-100 2 2 100

Total 114 204 55.9

Exp. Correct Actual Correct
50-59% 80 77
60-69 31 30
70-79 5 3
80-89 3 2
90-100 2 2
Total 121 114

O/U actually performed very well compared to what was expected. And hell, at 56% accuracy, you'll be making money anyway.












You've seen the performance, you've seen the stats, you know what to expect. What it comes down to:

Everyone's a winner with Black Box Sports. (especially if you win $20 $50 in the name change contest)

CHECK OUT THE POST BELOW FOR THE NAME CHANGE CONTEST (win $20 $50 for sending in your best name)

Jonathan
Black Box Sports

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Kickoff Approaches

What's up, Black Boxers?

Is it me or does the off-season seem to take forever? Finally, it's just a few short weeks away. NFL Black Box will be back in business starting week 2 of the regular season. That's Sunday, September 20th.

There have been a lot of changes over the past few months, so this is bound to be as exciting a season as ever. Will Terrell Owens tear up the Bills? Maybe add another team to those left in his wake. Will Tony Romeo rebound from that (long overdue) breakup with Simpson and maybe even win a (long overdue) playoff game? Is Eli Manning really worth $97 million? Denver running back Knowshon Moreno: Vegas' favorite to win rookie of the year at 5/2 odds. I don't Know about that.

Keep checking back for updates as the season draws near. As always, feel free to send your questions/comments/suggestions/hate mail/love mail/paypal donations to:

blackboxsports@gmail.com

Rock on,

Jonathan
Black Box Sports