Marching Toward Madness

Do Line Moves Matter? As long as I've been reading about "apps" and guys going to March Madness, I have heard about these guys who believe very strongly in "line shopping".   This is the concept of ensuring you find the best "value" for your bet.  The theory is why bet $5 on Duke to cover 26 points in the first round at William Hill when you can bet $5 on Duke to cover 25 points in the first round at CG Sports.    There are guys who are splitting their bankroll over a few different places so they can pick which line they want to play.    This kinda arbitrage seems silly to me for the purposes of bankroll.   Having to have significant extra money layed out that you won't ever play just to keep the option of shaving off a hook here or there.   Seems a pain to manage reporting and/or even the need to quickly get a bet in etc. But before you had the guys shopping lines, you had the guys trying to bet on a prediction of the lines...

The Best Favs in March Madness So when it comes to March Madness, many square bettors will talk about teams from year to year and/or historical performance and assume there is some correlation to performance.  This is a logical fallacy however there are some concepts which I guess you could feel were material and valid in your handicapping. I assume (and there is data coming) that some coaches are better at preparing their team, scouting opponents etc; no matter their players and opponents they would be more likely to win and cover games in the tournament.   This is a legit factor maybe. I assume that some programs are so "prestigious" that opposing players are materially and unique impacted by the opportunity to play that team that they grew up "dreaming about" and didn't get to play for;  but I'm not sure if that would make you be intimidated and play poorly or make you raise your game, for each kid it would be different. That said, I'm here t...

The Slow Teams Don't Cover Once again we deal with things that are logical but are they always true?.  I have heard many a person talk about how teams that play fast cover as they have more possessions to extend their lead where as favorites that play slow can't cover since they don't have time.  Now we all know this is illogical since Vegas knows their pace and sets the lines with that in mind.    But is there correlation for other reasons? As we did with Totals, lets look at the relationship between favs and dogs that play fast v slow compared to their opponents and their ability to cover & lets look at what possessions really mean to the cover/no cover bet and finally look at how the game types look.   This approach is very similar to what I did in the blog post "The Slow Teams go Under".    To understand some of what I'm saying here, you should read that post.   As always, this is 2 years of data set on p...

The Slow Teams Go Under Many a novice will believe the above statement and assume it is too logical, ie "super simple".  But clearly Vegas knows slow teams go slow and sets lower totals.  So it can't be that simple.    I often see posts in the MMILV group that I am part of on Facebook that also seem to lack understanding of Totals and results compared to trends.  This should provide some real data to drive a real conversation.   Again 2 years since this is all data that is SUPER impacted by possessions and we know since "The Change" the models would reset.    Lets start with the basic, Do slow teams go under?    We have to review off a par , since the past 2 years have not been a 50/50 result in my dataset (which could be a point or hook off to yours since we all bet at different books and at different times into slightly different lines).  My over par will be 59.22% which is the 61-42-1 recor...

The Spread Smart dudes spend a lot of time trying to determine what the Spread will be for each game.  Now most people will get this wrong and assume it is still 2007 Vegas where books really wanted to be books and were trying to drive 50/50 splits of bets and just profit off the vig but in 2018 we know that books will take a position when that position aligns to where they see a sellable line that will drive bets yet still be less than logical meaning they will win more than than lose and profit from the line.    We see this when we look at the public information given out about % of bets and % of money on each total, spread and half on sites like www.sportsinsights.com etc.    What Vegas sportsbooks do tend to do is make sure their sharp money is as 50/50 as possible and/or they have enough squares offsetting sharp money; they generally don't want to be against sharps BUT squares like March Madness are small fish to these sharks.  Marc...

The 1 Seed Money Line Myth Somewhere along the path to March, someone will come up with the same brilliant idea that has never been thought up before, "what if I just played a Money Line Bet with all of the 1 seeds, that would guarantee a win".   "I mean a 1 seed has never lost in the first round bro!" 1.  Vegas would never allow anything close to a guarantee stay on the board.  They are smarter than you, have hired the best and brightest and they may have some clear fixed guarantees they are in on but they'd never let you bet on something if they knew they could not win.   So alas, they don't have Money Lines on 1 v 16 match-ups.  Some offshore books do but why are you in Vegas if you are using your offshore book, stay home in Sandusky, Ohio and bet from the local Buffalo Wild Wings.   2.  If they did, bro probably shouldn't do it as it locks up too much cashflow that could be better used.   Lets use simple ma...

The Change In 2016, College Basketball changed dramatically, and that change impacted significantly the quality of play on the court and the ability for gamblers to predict that activity.   5 Seconds.    The move of the shot clock from 35 to 30 seconds is significant.   And gamblers often talk about March Madness trends from earlier this decade without understanding that much of that is invalid data, due to 5 seconds.   The shot clock drives a concept called Average Possession Length.  APL drives number of possessions/game.   One of the best ways to understand and predict future results of points scored by each team is to predict possession counts and then apply possession based stats against those predicted possessions in any given game.    Ken Pom has great data here I'll use to show the impacts of 5 seconds.   If we focus on the Tempo (Possessions/Game Total) you can see it increas...

The Seeds There is nothing more exciting than Selection Sunday.   For me that starts the best week of the year.   (And an aside, my second favorite week of the year is the week before when I'm watching the conference tournaments).    Selection Sunday is the result of an important process that is debated but in reality is very regimented and for gamblers important to understand.   This is the NCAA D1 Men's Basketball Tournament Committee Principles and Procedures.   So many times, I hear/read posts from people who don't understand the realities of how it works.   I'm not going to explain it all here; use this reference:    Long Form -- NCAA  There are 3 steps, they are unique and although at times overlapping done mutually exclusive to each other.    What I think most people will find interesting is that although there is much discussion, the process of selecting and seeding teams...