LSAClassOf2000

December 12th, 2013 at 8:46 PM ^

I joined and have already submitted my picks. I am hoping to do better than the 40%-ish percentile this time around - I sort of overthought last year's picks, but this year it is a mix if Sagarin, Massey and gut feeling, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks for the opportunity, incidentally. 

 

Joined: 01/07/2011

MGoPoints: 130800

tmon

December 12th, 2013 at 9:38 PM ^

I'm a big fan of looking at the numbers. You can go as far as LSA, above is talking about--pull up all sorts of stats and compare the teams, look to see who's better ranked by certain stats, etc. If you're not so into the stats though, honestly, I've had a lot of success by just looking at the spreads and comparing to what most people are picking and how high. I usually use ESPN, but I'm assuming you're able to see what the average confidence is and which team people are usually picking. When I don't put too much work into my picks I start by ranking the favorites based on the spread. Then, I compare the projected "big winners" to average confidence, and if it's a big spread with people not picking it highly I might bump it up to capitalize on their underrating. These days I get a bit more complicated, and you may not want to only pick favorites of course, but that basic approach honestly almost always puts me in the top 1/4 of the ESPN groups I've joined in the past. And I ended in the 99th percentile on ESPN's regular season pick'em this year.

Joined: 12/06/2013

MGoPoints: 5

maizenblue92

December 12th, 2013 at 10:23 PM ^

This is something my brother and I were talking about for this year. Just pick Vegas favorites. 

If you only pick straight up you can stop reading, otherwise continue:

If you use confidence points (CP) use the lines for the games to assign them. Rank the lines from highest to lowest (largest favorite to smallest favorite) and do the same with the CP (35-1) and match them up. Any group of teams with the same line (say 3 teams with -4) you can order those teams at your own discrestion. You could also come up with your own grouping system if you don't want it that simple. Also use opening lines only because public altered ones will skew results.

Example: a -17.5 team is 33-35 CP and a -3 favorite is a 2-4 CP

This is based on on some of the principle in this table and idea of playing the numbers to increase your straight up win percent and aid CP allocation. Of course this is a very simple example of the numbers I am talking about.

Favorite of # of GMS Lost Outright %
31+ pts 382 5 1.3%
24.5-31 617 24 3.9%
17.5-24 1013 71 7.0%
14.5-17 650 88 13.5%
10.5-14 1146 242 21.1%
7.5-10 1056 279 26.4%
3.5-7 1930 658 34.1%
3 or less 1269 621 48.9%
 

 

Joined: 01/01/2009

MGoPoints: 19715

tmon

December 12th, 2013 at 10:46 PM ^

This is exactly what I'm talking about. I used to go solely based on that strategy and had really solid results. This year (for a regular season pick'em) I went with a 50/50 combo of that and using rankings/numbers on other sites. Basically averaged various ranking systems with the spread based rank. It worked great. Occasionally I'll let my gut make a call at a low confidence point, but I haven't noticed any real gains from that.

However, the larger the group you're in,the less likely you are to win by just picking favorites. So with big groups it's good to look for value bets, like a game you were thinking of putting low because you see it as a 50/50, but like 90% of people are picking the favorite. That's a good value.

Joined: 12/06/2013

MGoPoints: 5