Football Byes, Lost Games and NBA Tanking

After writing my last post on the topic of whether a bye is the advantage it's often made out to be, it occurred to me that in the English National League since 2018, they have had a six team play-off format with the top two seeds having a nice long rest before hosting the winners of the Quarter-Finals in the Semi-Final round. 

An interesting case study and while we should have five seasons of data, COVID hit the Northern and Southern sections in 2021 and there was a problem with Concord Rangers in 2019 who, after finishing sixth, were barred from the play-offs due to failing ground size regulations.

Probably more disappointing for that club than for me, but 26 games is better than nothing.

Of those 26 matches the rested, higher seeded, club won just nine, with eight more games Drawn and the other nine going to the tired, and supposedly weaker side, and laying the home club in every match has an ROI of 33%, +8.6 units, and in matches where the Home side is odds-on the ROI is 72% (+10.14 units from 14 matches). 

I think I should add this to the 'Sacred Document' and hopefully get more comments like this one after the last update:

Many thanks for this most excellent quality after sales service!

We aim to please. 

How did the weekend go, I hear you ask? 

Overall not bad at all. American Football made us 3.71 units from 7 College and one NFL selections, while the EPL Draw System found two winners from two selections for a nice 4.85 unit gain. 

Not so good in Spain or Germany where the systems combined for a 4.05 unit loss. 

Backing the 'Dog in MLB playoffs over the weekend through to last night added 4.6 units to the pot, and while it is early days in the NHL, the system there is down 1.49 units after 10 games. 

Back to College Football, and in this post last week, I wrote about the differences that we see when sourcing our bets from different places.

This past Saturday, the 'official' system had 5 winners from 7 selections but Frédéric had twice as many picks and almost twice as many winners:

By the way I went 9-5 this weekend on the NCAAF. Maybe you see your selections just by clicking on "football" and going from there, vs me actually selecting each league (NCAAF, NCAAF FCS, and sometimes NCAAF added)? Still puzzling as to how we can come up with so many variations..

He very helpfully listed his 14 selections, and it's some good news that the official seven were all present, but what of the other seven extra qualifiers? Nowhere to be seen on Killer Sports. 

One such team was the Central Arkansas Bears who were on the road at the Kennesaw State Owls, and despite both teams being FCS teams (Football Championship Subdivision), the game is not in the database. 

Something appears to have changed after the 2019 season since a check on another team, Elon Phoenix, shows them 11 times in 2019, and just twice since. 

Honestly with so many games each week, seven is a lot easier to manage than 14, but if I am leaving money on the table, it appears I need to source my bets elsewhere. 

Unfortunately the Odds Portal site also doesn't appear to show any of those seven missing games, although they do have 48 matches which is two more than Killer Sports. Which begs the question, where are the markets for these games if they are not on Odds Portal? More to come I suspect.

The NBA season started last night, albeit with no official selections, and it's looking like a competitive season with no clear favourite, and five teams priced between 7.0 and 12.5 (Golden State Warriors, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks and Brooklyn Nets) but with an outstanding prospect coming up in the draft (Victor Wembanyama), tanking may well be an area of opportunity this season.

This ESPN article explains it well, and this line was interesting:

...tanking teams have a bigger impact on in-play wagering and "will cough up leads at greater rates than typical double-digit dogs."

Over the past three seasons, the teams that ended with five worst records during the regular season covered the spread in approximately 45.7% of games, excluding pushes.

As for who those five teams might be, the article mentions the contenders for the worst in the NBA, stating that:

Five teams - the Oklahoma City Thunder, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz - have season-win totals of less than 25. That's the most in any 82-game season in the last 20 years, according to sports betting archive SportsOddsHistory.com.

I'll try to remember to check the records of these five ATS from time to time.