On Deck

The play-offs begin today in the baseball and with some early start times and nothing in the way of football as an alternative, here's to some decent liquidity.

The opening game is the Texas Rangers @ Tampa Bay Rays, followed by the Cincinnati Reds @ Philadelphia Phillies and finally the New York Yankees @ Minnesota Twins.

Tampa Bay won their last four games v Texas this season, the Phillies beat the Reds 5-2 and the Yankees beat the Twins 6-2. Not surprisingly all three season-series winners are favourites, but the Yankees may be more vulnerable than the other two, with poor form (just 3 wins in the last 10 games) - the only problem being that the Twins are in even worse form with just 2 wins from their last 10 games!

Some statistics for the over / under bettor - Tampa Bay are on an 8-0 under run. Phillies have gone over in 6 of their last 7 home play-off games, with one push, and have won 7 games 1 on the trot.

In the NFL, it continues to pay to lay the favourite this season, with underdogs 38-24 against the spread after this weekend.

And in England, it's a boring week ahead - time for some more analysis of previous season's results. A new blog that has recently added to the blogroll reminded me that I need to go back and review the results of laying favourites based on their "Group". (Long-time readers may recall that I separated the EPL teams into the Big 4, Europas, Middlers and Struggers). The blog article looked at whether there may be value in laying EPL favourites outside of the Big 4, but I want to look at the results by 'group'.

"A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned." - Paul Newman, The Color of Money