Half-Term Report

It's half-term for the arena sports of NHL and NBA in the USA and as promised here is the half-time review of how the systems in the Sacred Manuscript have fared do far. 

The NHL broke-up first and aren't back until the weekend, while the NBA has a shorter break with play resuming tonight (Wednesday) with the regular season ending in less than two months on April 13th. 

In the NHL, the first basic system is off to a great start with an ROI of 10.9%, with the Puck Line bets with an even more impressive 32.2%. 

I've included the Over/Under for these matches because the Under shows a big edge so far this season. Historically, Unders have a slight edge winning at 53.8%, but the increase this season is interesting. 

For the more selective system the results are a little disappointing, but still profitable and the Unders trend here is even stronger: 

In theory, and certainly over the longer term, these more selective bets will have a higher ROI, but the reduced volume means that variance is a factor in the short term, and 15 nets is very much short term. 

For the second system the results are not as good. Long term (i.e. since 2006) the ROI on these are 8.2% and 15.1% but so far this season we are down 22.7% (from 60 selections) and 2.9% for the more selective system although this has only had 13 selections to date.

The third main system is down 11.5% (from 40 selections) with the more selective offshoot up 49%, which sounds more exciting than it is given that there has literally only been a handful of selections so far. Again, Unders at 59.5% are coming in at a higher rate than expected this season.

Moving to the NBA and the results are so far very disappointing. Most of the Spread systems are based on the premise that certain Away teams are often value, but this season the winning percentage (46.4%) is the lowest since records began in 1995.

This basic system currently has an ROI of -9.4% from 334 selections and it's not much comfort that factoring in the previous result for both teams this into a 12.1% ROI since this is just 54 selections. 

The Totals systems are at least performing decently so far, with the 'Overs on High Totals' system hitting at 55.5% while the 'Alpha Unders' has a losing 28-29 record to date, but in the hunt to be profitable at least. 

College Basketball doesn't have a mid-season break, and selections are few and far between in the earlier part of the season, but so far the three systems are a combined 9-9 with the end-of-season tournaments when we get really busy.

At least my bet on the Superbowl was profitable even if I didn't get the best value by waiting until kick-off.