Puck Review 2018-19

Another market inefficiency paid dividends last night with the conclusion of the 2019-19 NHL season, and the Stanley Cup being won for the first time by the St Louis Blues.  

When a series goes to a Game 7, the public bias is to favour the home team, and with the higher profile of the game, they appear to back up this bias with money, which leads to an opportunity as A Lucky A Day stated back in January of 2018:

The only improvement would be taking out the opening words of "I think".

The NHL re-organised in 2013, and since then there have been 42 game 7s. Admittedly not a huge number, but the road team has won 22 of those games at an average price of 2.284 for a 17.9% ROI.

Over the same time period, the ROI for this strategy in the NBA is 8.4%, while in the MLB it is 29%, which sounds great, but the playoffs there are a different format, and there have only been eight game 7s.

Looking back to the 2004 season, which is as far back as the database goes, the ROI is 9.7% from the 17 matches.

We could have another Game 7 in the NBA if the Golden State Warriors win their last ever game at Oracle Arena tonight.  

Back to Ice Hockey and while the NHL Regular Season was excellent, the post-season playoffs were terrible.

The above basic system was mentioned in October, in a post that looked at the claim that early season favourites were undervalued. I didn't find any evidence of this with the favourites my system uses. 

Skeptics won't be budged, but the evidence to me is clear that the market is inefficient in these games. If you'd started backing these selections in 2016 after seeing the previous three seasons show great promise, the statistics for the past three seasons are:

If you're a risk taker and had taken the plunge after two seasons the 1-in-x probability becomes 1336:

This is a system I'll be playing again next season.