Marching Toward Madness

The Slow Teams Don't Cover Once again we deal with things that are logical but are they always true?.  I have heard many a person talk about how teams that play fast cover as they have more possessions to extend their lead where as favorites that play slow can't cover since they don't have time.  Now we all know this is illogical since Vegas knows their pace and sets the lines with that in mind.    But is there correlation for other reasons? As we did with Totals, lets look at the relationship between favs and dogs that play fast v slow compared to their opponents and their ability to cover & lets look at what possessions really mean to the cover/no cover bet and finally look at how the game types look.   This approach is very similar to what I did in the blog post "The Slow Teams go Under".    To understand some of what I'm saying here, you should read that post.   As always, this is 2 years of data set on purpose and we only loo

The Slow Teams Go Under Many a novice will believe the above statement and assume it is too logical, ie "super simple".  But clearly Vegas knows slow teams go slow and sets lower totals.  So it can't be that simple.    I often see posts in the MMILV group that I am part of on Facebook that also seem to lack understanding of Totals and results compared to trends.  This should provide some real data to drive a real conversation.   Again 2 years since this is all data that is SUPER impacted by possessions and we know since "The Change" the models would reset.    Lets start with the basic, Do slow teams go under?    We have to review off a par , since the past 2 years have not been a 50/50 result in my dataset (which could be a point or hook off to yours since we all bet at different books and at different times into slightly different lines).  My over par will be 59.22% which is the 61-42-1 record for Round 0, Round 1, Round 2 games in

The Spread Smart dudes spend a lot of time trying to determine what the Spread will be for each game.  Now most people will get this wrong and assume it is still 2007 Vegas where books really wanted to be books and were trying to drive 50/50 splits of bets and just profit off the vig but in 2018 we know that books will take a position when that position aligns to where they see a sellable line that will drive bets yet still be less than logical meaning they will win more than than lose and profit from the line.    We see this when we look at the public information given out about % of bets and % of money on each total, spread and half on sites like www.sportsinsights.com etc.    What Vegas sportsbooks do tend to do is make sure their sharp money is as 50/50 as possible and/or they have enough squares offsetting sharp money; they generally don't want to be against sharps BUT squares like March Madness are small fish to these sharks.  March Madness Weekend One is

The 1 Seed Money Line Myth Somewhere along the path to March, someone will come up with the same brilliant idea that has never been thought up before, "what if I just played a Money Line Bet with all of the 1 seeds, that would guarantee a win".   "I mean a 1 seed has never lost in the first round bro!" 1.  Vegas would never allow anything close to a guarantee stay on the board.  They are smarter than you, have hired the best and brightest and they may have some clear fixed guarantees they are in on but they'd never let you bet on something if they knew they could not win.   So alas, they don't have Money Lines on 1 v 16 match-ups.  Some offshore books do but why are you in Vegas if you are using your offshore book, stay home in Sandusky, Ohio and bet from the local Buffalo Wild Wings.   2.  If they did, bro probably shouldn't do it as it locks up too much cashflow that could be better used.   Lets use simple math.  Using the modern