Halloween Spells Trouble

Fizzer generously shared a hot tip with me earlier today, writing:

As I know you are a fan of great stats, here is one for the footy today that you just can't ignore.

In the flashscores preview of Leicester v Everton the most telling stat has got to be: -

In a record stretching back to Oct 2002, Everton have only suffered 2 defeats in 15, in the last match before Halloween.

Get on the Toffees!

For some unexplained reason, my immediate thought was that Peter Nordsted had found a new outlet for his "tipping", my second thought was that Fizzer really missed a trick by not saying "Get stuck in to the Toffees" while my third thought, as much as my brain can handle at one time, was that Fizzer really should have said "get off the Foxes" as the other 13 matches in question might well have all been draws. 

Fortunately I made the sweet decision to leave this game alone, as Leicester City eased their relegation fears with a comfortable 2:0 win over the Toffees, in the midst of sticky patch, a spell witch shows no sign of ending. Something for the incoming manager to chew on.

I need to check out flashscores if they are providing constant treats like this. One can't help but wonder why Smartodds and Starlizard are wasting their money paying graduates and agents good money for statistical wizardry when they could be carving out profits by using flashscores. What a bunch of pumpkins!

Talking of pumpkins, the usually reliable @GracenoteLive had an erroneous tweet yesterday:

The year 2000 was, of course, the final year of the last (20th) Century, as well as closing out the second millennium, and not this century, but the error has not yet been corrected. Possibly the account is being run by some of the people who celebrated the new millennium a year early on December 31st 1999.  

Update time from the US systems, and the NCAAF Small Road 'Dogs had a second consecutive losing weekend with the ROI for the season dropping to 16.5%:

I'm hoping the inclusion of team names above doesn't cause too much confusion. To clarify, they are for identification purposes only, and play no part in the selection process itself.

A long awaited win for UMPO last night in the World Series, as the Los Angeles Dodgers ended a twelve game losing streak for the odds-against selection. There were a couple of underdogs at evens who won during this spell, but for the official system, it's been a disappointing year. With two or three games left, (the World Series is tied at 2), it'll be a losing post-season.

In the NBA, the Beast is up slightly with a 16-15 record, but still early days. Three point attempts are up as I expected, from 27 a game per team to just under 29, an increase of 7%, while the strike rate is only up by 4% so far.

After five flat seasons from 2007-12, there has been a steady increase in three point attempts as the way the game is being played evolves. Interesting, but perhaps not surprising, that the highest strike rate was in the days when shooting a three pointer was for the most part left to the experts (36.5% from 2007-09) while the percentage since 2013 hasn't exceeded 36%.

No NFL results yet, but this sign seen at a protest rally in the USA yesterday might amuse some NFL followers: 

Brady was certainly a Trump supporter during the election, which places him squarely on the right, both above and in other ways, but he did at least say that the found Trump's comments on NFL players right to protest "divisive".