THE POWER RANK

7-Nugget Saturday, June 4, 2022

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

NBA analytics from Drew Dinsick – To handicap the NBA, quantitative bettor Drew Dinsick uses a player based model.

He combines an ensemble of player based projections with his own estimates of playing time. One of the player based models is DARKO, whose creator Kostya Medvedovsky made an appearance on The Football Analytics Show podcast. This player model makes Boston -2.5 over Golden State on a neutral court.

During the 2021-22 season, the home team beat opponents by an average of 1.72 points. Home court is larger in the playoffs, but even a large estimate of 2.5 points leads to a pick ’em prediction for Boston at Golden State. The markets closed Golden State -3.5 for Game 1.

NBA Finals Game 2 – The shocking outcome from Game 1 wasn’t that Boston won a game at Golden State, it’s how they dominated the fourth quarter. From ESPN Stats and Info, the Celtics are the first team in NBA history to win a Finals game by double digits after trailing by at least ten entering the final frame.

While the Celtics are notoriously defensive-minded, Cleaning the Glass pointed out how well their shots went down. These percentiles are among all playoff games this season.

  • 62.9% effective field goal rate (eFG%) is 91st percentile.
  • 51.2% three point field goal percentage is 95th percentile.
  • 114.1 points per 100 halfcourt plays is 89th percentile.

What might this trend mean for Game 2? For these playoffs, Boston ranks sixth in eFG% while Golden State is second. Jayson Tatum had a down game per his box score numbers, but so did Draymond Green.

Sports books are expecting the Warriors to bounce back, as Golden State is -4 as of Saturday morning.

World Soccer Predictions – These predictions for regulation time are based on my world soccer rankings that take game results and adjust for opponent with The Power Rank algorithm. The ranks quoted below refer to these team rankings.

  • Ukraine at Wales, World Cup Qualifying – Wales has a 46.7% chance to win. Ukraine has a 26.1% chance to win. There is a 27.2% chance for a tie. Ukraine (23rd) got the supposed upset at Scotland (46th) to make it to this elimination match. However, it will be much more difficult against a solid Wales side (21st).
  • Uruguay at United States, Friendly – United States has a 41.7% chance to win. Uruguay has a 27.9% chance to win. There is a 30.4% chance for a tie. The United States (16th) looked solid in a 3-0 win over Morocco (24th). However, it’s always tough against South American teams, and Uruguay (13th) beat Mexico 3-0 earlier this week.
  • England at Hungary, UEFA Nations League – Hungary has a 13.7% chance to win. England has a 62.0% chance to win. There is a 24.3% chance for a tie. England rocketed up to 6th in my world rankings after making the final of Euro 2021. They should take care of business on the road at Hungary (43rd).

The world soccer rankings are now updated daily based on the most recent matches.

College Baseball – Regionals began Friday for the NCAA Tournament and Tennessee is a massive favorite to win the College World Series (-600 to win its regional per FanDuel and +250 to win the National Championship, with second place listed at 6/1).

As always, path matters when picking winners of a tournament, and if you need help handicapping which teams have the easiest/hardest journey to the end, Parker Fleming has compiled probabilities for every regional with breakdowns of team strengths/weaknesses.

One team that stood out when pouring over his breakdowns was Virginia Tech (10/1 on FanDuel, higher odds than the 12/1 earlier this week). Not only do they have an easier regional, the super regional they are paired with is more of a toss-up with Florida, Oklahoma and Liberty all in contention.

Predicting the NBA – While the Warriors were favorites in Game 1, many analytic models like ESPN’s BPI and FiveThirtyEight suggested going in the other direction, taking the Celtics as outright winners.

However, data scientist Walker Harrison tweeted a thread about how if you had bet against FiveThirtyEight all season, you would have earned a 20-30% return on investment. Harrison did stress though the importance of their model, saying once you remove its home court bias, there are ways to use those predictions for value.

However, we should challenge the assumption that a team’s number-one goal for any regular-season game is to win. Many coaches tweak lineup combinations and want to acquire enough different data as possible so that they know their options when the playoffs arrive. It’s perhaps one reason why Golden State projections seemed intuitively lower during their dynasty.

Hockey Trends – This week, I made an appearance on the All the Kings Men podcast to discuss the analytics of hockey. Topics included:

  • why expected goals are useful in predicting the future
  • newer stats being devised to isolate an individual skater’s ability
  • the philosophy behind tweaking lines

Shopping for the best price – The standard advice says to have multiple accounts and shop for the best price. If you want to bet the Dodgers moneyline against the Mets, -140 is a better price than -150 (break even probability of 58.3% and 60.0% respectively).

But have you thought deeper about why you should shop for the best price? As Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow explain in The Logic of Sports Betting, it’s better to think about both sides of this bet.

Let’s suppose you find one book with Dodgers -140 and another with Mets +140. The combination of these two bets gives a no hold market. You can bet $140 on the Dodgers and $100 on the Mets and end up with your original $240 no matter the result.

Compare this with the typical -110 to bet either side of a spread. Wagering $110 on each side guarantees a loss of $10, and that’s the hold of the sports book.

Shopping for the best price means lowering the hold of the sports book. To learn more about this, check out page 81 of…

Free copy of The Logic of Sports Betting

In their foundational book, Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow provide the ultimate introduction into the sports betting world. In addition to the crucial concept of a no hold market, they write about:

  • The surprisingly simple procedure that market making sports books use to determine the spread (it’s not analytics)
  • The truth about parlays

To get a free copy of The Logic of Sports Betting, sign up for The Power Rank’s free email newsletter. Valuable. Concise. Entertaining. Those are the goals with each correspondence.

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7-Nugget Saturday, May 28, 2022

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, each Saturday at 10am Eastern.

Dodgers Futures – No conversation about this year’s World Series would be complete without mentioning the likelihood that the Boys in Blue win the pennant and a world championship. After all, the Dodgers have consistently had one of the better pitching staffs in MLB, whether it’s looking at basic box score numbers like ERA or Statcast metrics like xwOBA.

But, is it wise to invest in L.A. futures given how big a favorite they are? I broke down this idea in my latest FOX Sports piece and concluded now is not the best time. For starters, randomness makes their odds too expensive.

More importantly, there is value in San Diego to win the division (+330 on FanDuel). Not only are they also near the top of the N.L. West standings, they will get Fernando Tatis, Jr. back in June or July and are already getting an MVP-caliber season out of Manny Machado.

Indy 500 – “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” will take place Sunday for the 106th time in its storied history. Not only does Scott Dixon have the pole position with one of the fastest times in qualifying history, he is one of the favorites (+650 on FanDuel, tied with Alex Palou for the shortest odds).

There’s another driver with a resume as impressive as anyone’s who may be challenging to handicap: Jimmie Johnson (+2100 on FanDuel, an increase in win probability from +2400). The seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion will make his debut at this race, starting on the outside of the fourth row.

How well do stock car driving skills translate to open-wheel racing? Other NASCAR drivers have finished as well as sixth (Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch), but as The Athletic pointed out, Johnson finished sixth at Texas Motor Speedway in his only other IndyCar start.

The story behind DARKO – Kostya Medvedovsky wanted to be a mathematician. However, he found it difficult to get into a PhD program because of his grades, which caused a lack of support from his professors. Instead, Kostya crushed the LSAT and was accepted at the University of Michigan law school.

As a patent lawyer, Kostya got interested in the NBA, and he developed the well respected DARKO projection system. On an episode of The Football Analytics Show, he talked about how machine learning weaves together two different models, one of which originated in helping rocket scientists get to the moon.

Since DARKO is essentially a PhD mathematics project, the joke is on Kostya’s undergraduate professors.

Time to Back the Oilers? – While Colorado and Tampa Bay remain among the favorites to win the Stanley Cup, Edmonton is making a push (+550 per FanDuel). In roughly half of their playoff games, the Oilers have scored at least five goals.

Granted, the sample size is small going up against only two teams, but Money Puck has tracked individual expected goals per 60 minutes and found that three of the top six skaters are Oilers: Evander Kane, Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman. That Leon Draisaitl is also capable of producing suggests Edmonton will be a tough out the rest of the way.

Game 1 between Edmonton and Colorado starts on Tuesday.

The sports betting business – The Betstamp app makes money from affiliate deals with sports books. Betstamp sends the book customers, the book pays Betstamp a fixed amount per customer.

Betstamp will not take an affiliate deal in which they earn a fraction of the lifetime losses of a customer. In fact, Rob Pizzola, one of the co-owners of Betstamp, said they would not even accept a higher fee for a customer more likely to lose.

On an episode of the Bet the Process podcast, Rob talked about how Betstamp’s primary goal is to help players win. Because of this belief, Betstamp is unwilling to take certain types of affiliate deals even if this lowers revenue.

This episode of Bet the Process also had a multitude of thoughts from hosts Jeff Ma and Rufus Peabody on ethics in the sports betting business (yeah, they talked about touts).

Criticizing Analytics – On AppleTV+ baseball broadcasts, viewers are given probabilities at the bottom of the screen of a variety of outcomes from the next pitch (in an unobtrusive way). But, as you know, there are many ways to arrive at these probabilities. Are the ones these broadcasts giving the most accurate?

FanGraphs decided to analyze how well the AppleTV+ broadcasted model stacked up against other approaches, and found some serious discrepancies. This experiment is significant because if telecasts deliver probabilities that are wildly off, it will create doubters of any quantitative analyses, not to mention further criticisms that America’s Pastime has lost touch.

NBA Finals – “More Ways to Win” will have a special NBA Finals edition Thursday, June 2nd. Catch air times and clips on Twitter @EdWithSports and @MoreWaysToWinTV.

With so many blowouts these playoffs, perhaps the value in betting individual games is either taking the favorite to cover or the underdog on the moneyline. The reasons for the blowouts are complex, but as NBA betting legend Haralabos Voulgaris suggested, teams are placing too much emphasis on shooting threes, not resting sufficiently and naturally succumbing to variance.

Data driven betting information

These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:

  • Valuable
  • Concise
  • Entertaining

While the emphasis is on the NFL and college football, this newsletter covers golf, baseball and basketball during the off season.

In addition, if you sign up for the newsletter, you get a free pdf copy of The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow.

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7-Nugget Saturday, May 21, 2022

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

PGA Championship win probabilities – Will Zalatoris always seems to show up at the majors. In the 25 year old’s short career, he has four top 10 finishes at majors, which includes a 2nd at the 2021 Masters.

Zalatoris is looking to break through at the PGA Championship. After two rounds, he leads the field at -9. On Saturday morning, FanDuel has his win odds at +230 (30.3% break even probability).

Mito Pereira (-8) is in second, but the markets give Justin Thomas (-6) the second best odds to win at +380 (20.8% break even probability).

The art of bookmaking – When Matt Metcalf first got hired at a sports book, he had one firm belief. Unlike other Las Vegas books, he wasn’t going to open a number, take some bets, and then move towards the market consensus.

Instead, Matt decided that he needed an idea of where the market was headed no matter what appeared on the Don Best screen. In his early days, he challenged himself to book without looking at the market consensus.

On a fantastic episode of The Football Analytics Show, Matt also discussed how he opens the first college football spreads and totals on Sunday morning and the one thing he would change in the sports betting world.

NBA Injuries – Miami has a few players who are questionable to play Game 3 at Boston:

  • forward P.J. Tucker (knee)
  • guard Max Strus (hamstring)
  • guard Gabe Vincent (hamstring)
  • point guard Kyle Lowry (hamstring)

Lowery hasn’t played since game 4 against the Sixers in the last series, but the other three player logged significant minutes in game 2.

Boston forward Sam Hauser will not play Game 3 because of a shoulder injury.

Golden State guard Gary Payton II continues to be doubtful to play in the Western Conference Finals.

NFL Strength of Schedule – Last week on the Nuggets, we discussed which teams earned advantages based on rest relative to opponents. But, there are two added dimensions to unequal schedules: how much more traveling some teams must endure and how challenging the home schedule is.

NFL Data Scientist Tom Bliss analyzed all 32 schedules and concluded Philadelphia has the most advantageous schedule. There may be value in taking the Eagles at +210 (FanDuel) to win the NFC East.

The New York Giants, Detroit and Chicago round out the top four. While they all have long odds to win their divisions, making the playoffs or going over their win totals might make more sense.

Preakness Stakes – Epicenter won’t have to worry about Rich Strike stealing his thunder this time! Just like in the Kentucky Derby, Epicenter is the morning line favorite, now at 6-5. Drawing post 8 may also seem like it would help this colt, as there is likely less traffic to slow down a push to the front.

However, Neil Greenberg made a compelling case why Simplification may be a more prudent bet at 6-1, despite starting at post 1. Normally starting on the inside is often problematic because there’s no room to run and not enough early speed to take an early lead. However, at the Preakness, no one post position has a significantly bigger advantage than another.

Also, if you firmly believe the longshot can win again, Fenwick is 50-1.

How a betting group comes together – As Mark DeRosa walked to his car, he noticed a guy was following him. This guy with blond hair didn’t look that threatening, but he did seem to be getting closer.

It also seemed a little creepy that Mark had seen this guy in sports books around Las Vegas. Mark put his hand on the mace that he carried.

This encounter was the first time Rufus Peabody talked with his future betting partner Mark. An episode of The Risk of Ruin podcast tells the story of this betting group. While it features interviews with Mark and Rufus, Risk of Ruin feels like listening to This American Life in its production value.

Them’s Fightin’ Words – Alabama head coach Nick Saban and Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher–who used to work for Saban–got into a public spat over NILs this week. Saban claimed the Aggies “bought every player” in their prized recruiting class, and Fisher responded by insinuating Saban has a checkered past with recruiting, he thinks he’s God and he should be slapped.

Until college football figures out its future in this NIL era, the good folks at SEC Shorts want to keep fanning the flame.

Data driven betting information

These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:

  • Valuable
  • Concise
  • Entertaining

While the primary emphasis is NFL and college football, the newsletter covers golf and baseball during the off season.

In addition, you get a free pdf download of The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow for signing up.

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7-Nugget Saturday, May 14, 2022

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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.

Rufus also described the level of detail that he considers in his golf calculations in a great episode of Establish the Run.

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:

  • Valuable
  • Concise
  • Entertaining

While the primary emphasis is NFL and college football, the newsletter covers golf and baseball during the off season.

In addition, you get a free pdf download of The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow for signing up.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”








 

 
 

7-Nugget Saturday, May 7, 2022

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

Ranking NBA Talent – “Who is currently the best player in the NBA?” is both a simple question and a daunting exercise. Analytical and conventional approaches have attacked answering it in multiple ways. The one set of rankings that seems to be the most trusted and accurate is called DARKO.

DARKO, or Daily Adjusted and Regressed Kalman Optimized projections, is an attempt to be forward-looking to determine who will play the most important roles for their teams, largely based upon box score and tracking data. As it currently stands, Milwaukee big man Giannis Antetokounmpo is #1 in DARKO, followed by Philadelphia standout Joel Embiid and Boston forward Jayson Tatum.

While Boston led the NBA in several defensive metrics throughout the regular-season, Milwaukee simply having Antetokounmpo is why the Celtics have never been heavy favorites to win that playoff series.

Kentucky Derby – Any elaborate bet should include the favorite. As the Courier-Journal has pointed out, the last nine post-time favorites have all finished fourth or better, and they have often won outright.

Zandon should be the favorite but Epicenter is not far behind (3-1 vs 7-2 odds, respectively). Two other horses with a chance to capture the first jewel of the Triple Crown were trained by controversial figure Bob Baffert: Messier and Taiba.

NFL Draft Grades – Let’s suppose you’re a Pats fan, and you’re looking at the post draft analysis on ESPN. Draft expert Mel Kiper Jr. gives New England a C+, tied for worst among 32 teams. For example, he sees OG Cole Strange from Chattanooga as a reach at the end of the first round.

However, it doesn’t matter.

Benjamin Robinson looked at a variety of draft grades over seven years, and asked how well they predicted the future performance of the players. He used the Approximate Value by Pro Football Reference to evaluate players.

Robinson found no statistical relationship between draft grades and the AV of a team’s draft class. All hope is not lost for Strange though. Robinson developed a more robust linear model that suggests that players drafted by New England tend to overachieve.

MLB predictions – The Mets have surged out of the gate with a 19-9 record and +32 run differential. In addition, they will have Max Scherzer take the mound against Philadelphia.

The Power Rank’s MLB predictions give the Mets a 58.0% win probability over the Phillies. These predictions, which now incorporate data from the current season, are available around 10pm Eastern the night before games.

The markets opened with the Mets at -110 on Friday night, but have moved to -146 at FanDuel (59.3% break even probability).

Stanley Cup Playoffs – Currently, the Colorado Avalanche are still sizable favorites to hoist the cup next month, more for being well-rounded than necessarily having the best offense, defense or goalkeeping.

However, if you aren’t building your own models to try and beat the market, Micah Blake McCurdy tweets daily probabilities for playoff teams to win it all. Even if you aren’t betting on hockey these playoffs, the data visualization he puts together is swanky (technical term).

Sweet Rides – How would allowing athletes to make money off of their name, image and likeness affect college football? In one way, it’s given fans something unusual to talk about during the offseason.

Take Texas running back Bijan Robinson, who just signed an endorsement deal with Lamborghini of Austin. Arguably no one will have a better NIL deal. At least Longhorn football won something lately.

DraftKings stock price – A month ago, Jason Robins, the CEO of DraftKings, issued a stern warning for those who sold DraftKings stock.

The stock price of DraftKings was $17.38 when Robbins sent this tweet. The price closed at $13.15 at the close of the markets on Friday, May 6, a 24% decrease.

It’s not just DraftKings, as stocks have been down ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps the lesson is that executives should be cautious about making proclamations when non sequitur events happen.

Data driven betting information

These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:

  • Valuable
  • Concise
  • Entertaining

While the emphasis is the NFL and college football, this newsletter covers golf, MLB and other topics during the off season.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”