Moving Lines

There are still a couple of matches to play before Week 3 of the NFL season is complete, but so far it's been a winning one. 

Something very strange happened leading up to the start of the Tennessee Titans v Green Bay Packers game. 

Less than 30 minutes before kick-off, the Packers were a selection at 1.96.

But according to Killer Sports, the Packers went off as favourites, giving two points, which is quite a large move in a few minutes.  I'm pretty sure my 50p didn't move the line that much... 

Anyway, the bet was a winner, but it won't show up in the 'official' results. As I've written before, sometimes these 'ghost' bets go for you, and sometimes they go against you.

The College Football Week 4 went 10-10 and is 39-29 overall for the season and there were no Canadian Football Selections this week. 

We did have a winner at 3.66 with the Manchester City v Arsenal game finishing all-square, perhaps a little fortuitous but again, sometimes the breaks go for you and sometimes they go against you.

The new baseball system I mentioned a couple of days ago started off with a winner for subscribers on Friday, and then produced two more on Saturday. The p-value is even more significant now! 

I'm going to be away from my computer for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow. One of my retirement goals is to try out RV life. It's been about 30 years since my last trip which was to Florida when I was living in Arkansas, but with the father-in-law now recuperating slowly at home, my wife and I will be heading into the San Bernardino Mountains for about ten days. 

I'll be back in early October, by which time the regular baseball season will be over, with my wife's San Diego Padres now looking almost certain to be featuring in the playoffs.

Winners and September Baseball

It was almost a perfect night for the Sacred Manuscript yesterday with the Thursday Night NFL game (New York Jets v New England Patriots) a comfortable winner, and all three MLB selections were winners too.

The final WNBA selection of the regular season was a loser though, and while the systems in this sport do apply in the playoffs, there's typically not too many selections. 

One of the baseball systems is under review. Not because it's not been successful - this season it has an 'official' ROI of 27.6% and is up 14.84 units - but because it has generated no selections since the All-Star break.

Too late for this season, but there definitely seems to be a case for either making this a system a first half of the season system only or adjusting the parameters. 

The last month of the regular season is one in which the motivation for all teams is not the same. There are teams looking to win their division, teams looking to make the playoffs via the Wild Card, and teams looking forward to the season being over.

In the latter category, historically the market under-values Home teams, in particular Home teams on a winning streak who are playing a Divisional opponent. I suspect the focus for most bettors at this time of year is understandably on the more important games with post-season ramifications.

We have data since 2007 thanks to Killer Sports and the p-value is significant:

Stateside

As some of you know, it's been an interesting few weeks, with my father-in-law being rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, blood transfusions and all that good stuff, but he's on the mend now. 

The challenge is that my wife is an only child and California is a long way away and it's probably not the last time we'll get a call like this as neither of her parents are getting any younger. 

Her dad will be 79 in December, her Mum (or Mom) is 75, and as were my own parents, they are somewhat stubborn when lifestyle changes are suggested that would help them. 

They live in a tri-level house that they built themselves, so while that is not an ideal environment, they have this deep emotional attachment to it and simply refuse to even consider moving or down-sizing. 

Neither are particularly mobile, (her Dad was a professional baseball player for several years and has paid the price in recent years with knee and hip replacements) and the consequences of a fall can be severe, but there's only so much one can do. 

At least now that I am retired, it's a lot easier to hop on a plane and fly over there, but it's certainly not an ideal situation. 

Vent over, and the NFL is back, and it's been an unusual start in more ways than one. I mentioned the Friday Night game in Brazil in this previous post, but it's been unusual in terms of results with the biggest favourite losing straight up in both Weeks 1 and 2, the first time this has happened since 1980 according to Sports Odds History.

Week 1 was not pleasant for followers of the systems in the Sacred Manuscript - "brutal" as one subscriber called it - but while it's always nice to get off to a strong start, it's important to remember that it's a marathon not a sprint, and Week 2 was profitable bringing the overall record for this season to 9-13.

The College Football systems are purring along nicely though, with a 41-23 record but the CFL Totals are hurting us north of the border with an overall 16-18 record there. 

The WNBA regular season ends today, and we have one final selection before the playoffs start on Sunday. The three systems are a combined 31-16-2 (12-7-1, 10-6-1 and 9-3-0) so far. It's not the highest number of selections each season, but since records began it has a good record:

Baseball has another ten days of its regular season to go, with the playoffs starting on October 1st. 

The NBA starts on October 22nd.  

NFL 2024 - An Unusual Start

The 2024 NFL season kicks-off tomorrow (Thursday 5th September) and it looks very much like we'll have two systems in play, one spread and one total.

And then on Friday there is a very unusual game. Friday NFL games are rare enough, with just six all-time, but this one is unique in that it is the first regular season game ever to be played in South America.

São Paulo, Brazil is the venue, and it's officially a Home game for the Philadelphia Eagles who play the Green Bay Packers. I'm also aware that one subscriber from Brazil, Victor, will be present at the game which coincidentally is the same match-up for the last NFL game I saw live when my son was living in Philadelphia. Unfortunately we will be on opposite sides when it comes to who we will be supporting. 

Of the six previous Friday games, four were Christmas games, and last year there was a Thanksgiving Friday game, so this is the first non-holiday Friday game other than a 2005 game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs which was moved forward a couple of days to avoid running into Hurricane Wilma.

Regular season neutral matches are historically good for Favourites (ATS) with a 64.7% win rate and for Unders with a 55.8% win rate from the small sample size of 52 matches.

August Wrap, Draws All Over

Another month in the books, with August seeing the return of football in Europe after an off-season break that seems to get shorter each year. 

In the US, the MLB season starts getting to the interesting stage, with the regular season concluding before the end of September, and the playoffs starting on October 1st. 

As readers will be aware, I've been keeping my powder dry in this league while the markets adjust to the significant rules changes in recent seasons, but I did dip my toes into the water in the Sacred Manuscript with a couple of systems. 

Or I tried to, but the river ran dry for one of them! 

In August, the first system generated the grand total of zero selections which was a little disappointing but the ROIs for the season remain at 27.6% when betting Straight Up, and 9.4% when betting on the Run Line. 

The Totals System didn't exactly generate a huge number of bets either, but 7 of the 11 were winners with one push, and for the season overall the record of 53-34-2 means a 61% strike rate.

The College Football season also got underway, and while this is probably not one of the most followed systems by subscribers, the basic systems combined for an 8-6 winning record, with the more selective ahead 6-2 after Week One.

The NFL season starts this week with a couple of Thursday Night games to kick things off. Autumn is almost here.

In the CFL (Canadian Football League) the newly added system went 3-3 for a small loss after we lost the Under/Over on one game by 1/2 point. It happens. 

Back to round-ball football and for the second consecutive year, we were off to a winning start with the Community Shield ending as a Draw at an 'official' 3.90. 

I was matched at 4.8 earlier in the day, and whether the steaming was due to Sacred Manuscript subscribers investing their life savings (sincerely hope this was not the case) or a reaction to the line-ups, I'm not quite sure, but at 4.8 it seemed there was only one direction the odds would move.

The updated numbers for the Community Shield matches and the totals including FA Cup and League Cup Finals are now:

As for the domestic leagues, I've received some ideas from a couple of subscribers, specifically around the EPL Draw System.

One subscriber wrote:

...but I find it hard to see the logic of backing draws in say the Premier League but not also the Championship, or La Liga 2 but not La Liga 1.

I fully agree. In a perfect world, the rationale for a Draw System in a top league should apply across other similar tier leagues as well as further down the league even if results weaken, as suggested in the examples above, but this wasn't the case when I last looked at other leagues in some detail maybe five or more years ago. 

Back then, I put it down to each league and division having it's own characteristics, and with other priorities in life, left it at that. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake. 

The first versions of the Sacred Manuscript contained the EPL Draw System, but then it was mentioned to me about this time two years ago that Spain's Segunda División showed similar results, and with a slightly different set of parameters, I verified this and added it to the Sacred Manuscript. It has been up by 26.46 units since then.

More recently, our old friend Dr Tsouts mentioned similar findings in the Greek Super League while very recently, in the past few days to be precise, another subscriber told me that he used the idea, again with the parameters modified, with success in La Liga and the Chinese Super League. 

My knowledge of Chinese football was non-existent, that of Greek football not much more, but data is data so I took a look and as a result the Greek and Chinese Leagues with the appropriate selection criteria are now added to the Sacred Manuscript - and before anyone complains about not receiving their update with the latter, the league is on a break for a couple of weeks so I'll be combining it with a few other updates - and am now turning my attention to La Liga.

I'm not giving too much away here, since it's been discussed on the blog previously, but in the EPL, in games between two closely matched teams, e.g. within 10% of each other, the Draw represents value. 

Since 2001, right up to this past weekend, there have been 640 such matches, 199 winners and a profit of 38.87 units or an ROI of 6.1%. 

The term "within 10%" actually means any match within a range of +10% (a positive number for matches where the Home team is the favourite) to -10% (a negative number for matches where the Away team is favourite). 

The mid-point here happens to be zero, and in a perfect market this is perhaps where you would expect it to be, but all markets are different. 

I think I've mentioned here before that results did vary depending on whether we were on the plus or minus side, but I clearly drifted off to another idea and never followed up. 

It summary, it appears that the basic rationale for the "close" idea carries over from the EPL to at least some of these other leagues, but there is a difference in both what "close" actually means, and in where the mid-point for the range should be. 

Of course if zero doesn't fall within the optimal range, I'd need an alternative term.  

With my new employment status, or lack thereof, and thus a little more free time, I plan to revisit these other big leagues and see if the Championship and La Liga are viable leagues too. 

La Liga certainly seems to be. Here are the preliminary results:

Obviously the 2024-25 numbers aren't anything to get excited about yet, and the 5 years and 10 years totals exclude them, but these are solid results. 

On a monthly basis, the profits do dry up a little in the first quarter of the calendar year, but overall they look pretty consistent. 

I'm pretty sure that subscribers can expect another update with this league included, and possibly others,  

The Draw isn't everyone's cup of tea, which is why there is value to be found. 

The Sacred Manuscript is now up to 100 pages, and with new systems added at the suggestion of subscribers now making it more than 50 long-term profitable systems, is now ridiculously underpriced. 

We now have systems for the College Basketball end of season Tournaments, an NFL System based on Bye weeks, NBA Systems based on travel and Time Zones, as well as the previously mentioned Greek Super League and Chinese Super League Draw systems. And soon, La Liga and who knows what other leagues from around the globe.