Sucky Predictions
Here's my favorite e-mail of the week, from little Timmy Eubank in Yahoo Land:
"your nfl predictions suck. don't quit your day job, jerk off!"
And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too.
I don't know how clear I can be about the predictions. I said that the lines are too good to beat with any consistency. Our computer, I think, does find the games where the lines are off for reasons that are not reflected by the respective stats. But there are often good reasons for these adjustments, as they reflect the anticipated collective wisdom of the betting public. (By this I mean, that if you wanted to bet Buffalo last week, you had to pay a premium in terms of what the Bills were laying at Frisco.) And even if you can find that outlier based on the key stats, performance in any given week deviates too far from average for your odds to increase dramatically.
Now don't get me wrong. I wouldn't be doing the computer picks if I didn't think they could beat the spread more than 50 percent of the time. In fact, I think the computer could beat the spread with these games 60 percent of the time. And even with another 1-3 week (the second in a row), the computer is 18-12 on the year (or exactly 60 percent).
Next year, there will be a bigger sample because I'll have the stat index up all year and I'll guess that the stats have achieved enough critical mass to start the system after Week 6 (when all teams have played at least five games). That gives us 11 weeks of games to test.
As for the other games, those are just guesses. Sometimes we guess well, sometimes we don't. Last week, Tim was right. The guesses sucked: 5-9 with two games called right on the spread (so those don't count). This week will be rough again unless we're lucky because you really don't know who will play hard in most matchups. But in Weeks 14 and 15, we were well over .500.
I'm pretty confident about the playoffs (unless the lines are really good). I think those games are stripped of everything except the on-the-field matters that our index is very good at sorting through.
"your nfl predictions suck. don't quit your day job, jerk off!"
And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too.
I don't know how clear I can be about the predictions. I said that the lines are too good to beat with any consistency. Our computer, I think, does find the games where the lines are off for reasons that are not reflected by the respective stats. But there are often good reasons for these adjustments, as they reflect the anticipated collective wisdom of the betting public. (By this I mean, that if you wanted to bet Buffalo last week, you had to pay a premium in terms of what the Bills were laying at Frisco.) And even if you can find that outlier based on the key stats, performance in any given week deviates too far from average for your odds to increase dramatically.
Now don't get me wrong. I wouldn't be doing the computer picks if I didn't think they could beat the spread more than 50 percent of the time. In fact, I think the computer could beat the spread with these games 60 percent of the time. And even with another 1-3 week (the second in a row), the computer is 18-12 on the year (or exactly 60 percent).
Next year, there will be a bigger sample because I'll have the stat index up all year and I'll guess that the stats have achieved enough critical mass to start the system after Week 6 (when all teams have played at least five games). That gives us 11 weeks of games to test.
As for the other games, those are just guesses. Sometimes we guess well, sometimes we don't. Last week, Tim was right. The guesses sucked: 5-9 with two games called right on the spread (so those don't count). This week will be rough again unless we're lucky because you really don't know who will play hard in most matchups. But in Weeks 14 and 15, we were well over .500.
I'm pretty confident about the playoffs (unless the lines are really good). I think those games are stripped of everything except the on-the-field matters that our index is very good at sorting through.
Entry #110423937567963549 posted by Catherine Salfino at 7:50 AM
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