Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, each Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Betscope MLB – Colin Davy created Betscope for you to find the best markets based on your beliefs. The tool started with the NBA and has moved on to baseball.
Don’t have any beliefs? Don’t run your own calculations? Use the markets.
On Friday, Circa sports book had an implied win probability of 61.6% for the New York Yankees at the Chicago White Sox. Betscope lets you find the best markets based on this win probability.
Based on Circa, Betscope suggested a 4% edge on New York Yankees -2.5, (+162 on FanDuel). The Bronx Bombers hit four home runs to win 10-4 and cover two and a half runs against the White Sox.
NFL Schedules – One of the more infuriating analyses of NFL schedules is determining which teams have the toughest slates based on last year’s winning percentages. Predicting future success has much more to do with the new season’s personnel, play design, innovation, etc.
While we already knew who will play whom before NFL Schedule Day, what matters when betting futures is rest advantage. For example, Detroit has an advantage when they travel to Dallas during week 7. The Lions are coming off a bye but Dallas plays at Philadelphia the week before.
NFL Data Scientist Tom Bliss charted the rest advantage based on the schedule of 32 teams, and those with the most advantageous schedules are Detroit, Carolina and Dallas. The worst are New England, Arizona and Green Bay.
NHL Playoffs – If it seems like the first round in the Stanley Cup Playoffs has not been competitive, you are not alone. Through Thursday, the average margin of victory has been 2.95 goals. Per ESPN, that margin would be the largest ever in first round NHL playoff history.
Also, the average total has been 6.63, which is historically higher than what’s expected in the playoffs. Part of that trend is because goalies are pulled earlier in games. This post explains why teams are pulling the goalie earlier.
WNBA – The early season usually brings its uncertainties with any league. However, the WNBA presents even more challenges this season because of key players. For example,
- Elena Delle Donne of the Washington Mystics missed last Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Lynx. After two back surgeries in 2019, Della Donne opted out of the 2020 season and only played three games in 2021.
- Breanna Stewart of the Seattle Storm missed Wednesday’s game against Phoenix Mercury and is day to day. Stewart missed the post season in 2021 because of surgery on her left Achilles.
These teams will look much different later this season based on the health of these stars.
Correlations in golf – On an episode of the Establish the Run podcast, Rufus Peabody talked about his golf calculations for betting and DFS. Host Adam Levitan asked him about correlations in the performance of players.
Rufus said that weather certainly caused correlated outcomes. For example, high winds tend to lead to higher scores. However, he also suggested that he didn’t find any correlation when two golfers get paired together, although he did joke about how a Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka pairing might be the exception.
Exercising the Brain – You practice a sport to prepare for as many unusual outcomes as possible. If you’re an NFL front office, why not do the same thing with the draft?
As Benjamin Robinson tweeted, the Cleveland Browns ran draft simulations so they could be prepared for potential trades, surprise picks, etc. This is the essence of game theory: studying different outcomes based on how others behave.
Twitter Enhancements – Don’t worry, this nugget has nothing to do with Elon Musk. One of the less powerful aspects of Twitter is its search bar. Sorting through useless information used to be the way of the social medium before discovering what the search was intended for.
Thankfully, there are ways to make Twitter searches much better, as this thread detailed.
Data driven betting information
These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:
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